


One Night In Cardiff.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Paradox, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-06
Updated: 2008-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack wasn't allowed in this part of the morgue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Night In Cardiff.

Jack wasn't supposed to be down here. But he'd been on duty for five days straight and couldn't unwind and the Hub was so empty with Kevin dead and Alan gone and Jess off on whatever secret mission One had sent them, and what were they going to do, anyway, execute him for being curious? Yes, he had been welcomed home with a firing squad when he came back from the War, but that had been only innocent hazing. And the Prince making sure he was who he said he was.

(And it was his own fault; he should have recognized the signs of a shapeshifter invasion and buggered off to spend a week in a pub instead of locked in a cell next to an amorphous creature from 3092 who wanted to sell him plastic sheeting.)

But the Hub was empty now and Kevin had been locked into one of the drawers, and so Jack had an excuse for wandering through the morgue, fingertips skipping over the names and dates as he walked. He turned around a column back towards the main high-security vault and froze. There was a man there, standing in a corner, bracing his arms on the wall and stretching his back.

Whoever the intruder was, he had a great ass. Jack took his gun out of the holster and focused on the man's shoulderblades. "Hi. I'm Captain Jack Harkness. And you?"

"That time already?" The man straightened. "My, how time flies." He turned around and smirked. "Please put that away. You've only two bullets left and you'll need them tomorrow."

"Why?" Jack didn't lower his gun, although it was an effort to keep his hand from shaking as he recognized the man. Himself. But not. Another himself. "What's tomorrow?"

"Sorry, can't tell you." The Other shrugged. "Timelines. Besides, I can't remember what I told myself, so if I tell you anything, I could cause a paradox."

"You don't remember this?" Meeting himself. Crossing timelines. Well, Jack reasoned, what with his reckless time travel, it had to happen eventually.

(Did the grandfather paradox apply to shooting yourself, even if you were immortal?)

The Other looked affronted. "Of course I remember this. It's the 6th of September, an hour until dawn, and you've got six bulletholes in your chest. I'd tell you to start wearing a bulletproof vest when you and Alex go weevil hunting, but they won't make our preferred style for three thousand years, so there's no point. I remember this perfectly; I just can't remember it verbatim. Not my fault. It's been a while."

"Yeah? How much of a while?"

"You want that linearly or my personal timeline?" The Other made a blurred motion and Jack found himself completely disarmed. Shit. He should know better by now than to trust even himself. "Roughly forty years awake, two thousand asleep. Now play nice. I just need..." his fingers ghosted over Jack's arm until he had his wristband deactivated. "This is going to get deliberately shorted out later, I just need to make sure...yes, shut up, I am walking the fine line of paradox, but it's for a good cause, and stop struggling...bloody Time Lords, always thinking they know best--"

"We find the Doctor again?" Jack asked, voice muffled by the wall. Because, really, that was so much more important than the fact that his doppelganger was pressing an erection against his ass.

The Other completely ignored him. "There. It's fixed. But it's keyed to my vortex radiation levels, not to yours, so don't get any ideas. But it should manage to transport itself back to this exact spot the day after it all goes to hell, which is all I need it to do. I can swap it out for a perfectly working model after I kill that son of a bitch."

The Other released him and Jack stopped to ask, "anyone I know?" before taking a swing, which the Other easily blocked.

"But I definitely remember doing that." The Other chuckled. "We are so very predictable."

He had a point. (_I_ had a point?) Jack wasn't sure. This sort of thing was covered in the Time Agent manual under idiotic things to never ever do under pain of the universe spanking you for your presumption. But the Other was touching him in a very familiar manner, and he still existed, and, wow, they had to be the same person, because Jack had never told anyone he had an erogenous zone _there_.

"So do we shag?" he asked.

The Other's mouth opened and closed and then he banged his head against a closed drawer dramatically. "Please don't tell me that counts for a line in this decade. I won't believe you."

Jack rolled his eyes at himself. "You'd rather we stood here for ten minutes while I asked you a bunch of questions about my future that you won't answer because of timelines, while you look at me like you're wondering what the back of our head looks like?"

"You're looking like that, too!" the Other objected. "And, well, yes. We shag. Of course we shag. We're us. We're Captain Jack Harkness. We venture out into the unknown and shag it."

"And we've just been stuck in a box in the morgue for, how long did you say it was?"

"Oh, don't worry, we've gotten laid since then. Torchwood always took me out of the freeze every so often to make sure my muscles didn't atrophy, and ten years ago, I set it so that I can control it myself and save them the hassle. Good thing I remember my away missions. I get out, I walk around, I get a haircut, I get laid, I buy some dirty magazines, I put myself back into solitary confinement for another few months until you bugger off to look for the Doctor again. Peaceful enough vacation."

Jack peaked around into the drawer. "Dirty magazines?"

"Basic necessity. Back when Julianne was in charge, she left me Russian novels," the Other shuddered. "I went through War and Peace twice. _Twice_. Even the Master didn't make me read War and Peace twice."

He'd been sneaking dirty magazines into Torchwood since the thirties. That, of all the insanity of this conversation, was what made Jack pinch himself. He'd been bringing porn in and jerking off in a morgue box and avoiding himself and--

"Easy," the Other murmured, catching him as he swayed. "I know it's hard to take. You've had a long day."

"We're looped," Jack said, putting his arm around the Other's shoulder as he pushed himself up all the way. "Unless the shapeshifters got lost again on their way home, we're more looped than the Eureka Nebula."

The Other patted him on the back, and slid a finger down his spine. Jack had no idea what he was looking for, but it felt nice. "Yes, but not conventionally. And we're so very dead anyway. The normal rules probably don't apply."

In other words, "You don't know." Jack leaned against the column of morgue drawers and blinked rapidly to get his bearings again. Yep. Still staring at himself. And he was looking good, although slightly gray around the edges. "You actually don't know."

"Sorry, I had better things to think about while in the drawer than how I manage to touch you without the universe collapsing in on itself. Try to contain your disappointment in the momentary failure of our narcissism."

"Aw, we get less narcissistic with age? That's no fun."

"If it helps," the Other said, "I was plotting the fine details of revenge with a side helping of the myriad of things I'm going to do to our lover once I get back to my time. I didn't have much time for contemplating the mysteries of the universe."

"You're right," Jack agreed. "Sex and violence are so much more important than sorting out the space-time continuum."

"Exactly." The Other pulled gently on Jack's braces. "Humor an old man and take these off for me."

"What happened to your own?" It seemed his fashion sense wouldn't change between now and whenever he got frozen, because the Other was dressed almost exactly the way Jack was now, with only a few noticeable differences. Such as weapons. He'd have to slip himself the code to the armory, because him being unarmed was so very, very wrong.

"Lost my taste for bondage," the Other said airily, then shoved his left hand with no further comment down Jack's trousers.

"Ung," Jack said.

"Braces. Off." The Other growled, then licked up Jack's neck. "Mm. We taste good."

"We shouldn't," Jack replied, but didn't elaborate on the amount of his own blood that was still splattered over his legs. He unsnapped his braces, letting them hang down, and then got to work on the other one's belt.

"We have been stuck in a sterilized vault for eight months, and we are still defrosting all the way," the Other admitted, and worked the fly on his trousers. "But I'm sure you'll taste wonderfully after you shower."

Jack traced his fingers down the other one's cock. He looked up, breezy smile covering up real worry. "Something I should know?"

"I was cryogenically frozen!" the Other swatted his hand away. "These things happen!"

"So we weren't stupid enough to sleep with a Moheq priest." Jack nodded. "Good to know."

"Oh, we were," the Other said, and then wrapped both his hands around Jack's cock and began to stroke. "We just ran away before the guards came. And then Tosh shot their President. It was a long Christmas, that one. And then we got chewed out by five different ambassadors to the United Nations for sacrificing their limos to the greater good. Boxing Day was worse, of course. It generally is."

"I don't believe a word you're saying," Jack informed him, and started nibbling on his collarbone. He'd always wanted to do that. It was just so...there. And tempting. Colder than he'd normally like, but he could do something about that.

And did.

"I can't believe," the Other said twenty minutes later, "we just did that."

"Nng?" Jack lifted his head from the rim of the mortuary drawer. "You said you remembered it."

"Yes, but I also remember a lot of thing that never actually happened." He took a step back and gentlemanly offered Jack a hand up, then started getting dressed.

"Are you this cryptic naturally or do you have to work at it?" Jack asked, genuinely curious. He was pretty sure he wasn't this frustrating. He'd have to ask Alex in the morning. Which was, he checked his watch, in six and a half minutes.

"Bit of both," the Other admitted. He tugged his coat on and started buttoning it. "Oh, that reminds me. I need you to do something for me."

Jack helped him fasten the top button. "What?"

"You're going to find the Doctor's hand." The Other put his finger to Jack's lips. "No, don't ask when, I'm not telling, but when you do, I need you to lock me in the drawer and not unlock it until you get back from the end of the universe."

"The end of the universe," Jack repeated. "Right. Is there a restaurant there? Does Rose take me dancing?"

The Other actually flinched. Sore spot, then. Jack didn't want to think about the implications of that. "Shut up, this is important. I need you to do this for me, because there is no way I will be able to resist the urge to play god if you don't. I'll get up and try to rewrite history, and you _cannot_ let me do that."

"End of the universe," Jack repeated again. "Okay. Check."

"It's okay if you're late. I know you don't get around to it until Ianto rents Aliens. Well, the morning after he rents it. You're not in any condition to leave his flat for most of the night."

Jack whistled. "I haven't met this guy yet, but I like him already."

"Good, because you're not going to like the film." The Other presses down on the drawer, checking that it was still firmly attached to the wall, then climbed into it in one practiced step. "If only because it's Ianto's favorite and he wanted to pay attention to it."

"How inconsiderate." Jack watched in fascination as his future self situated himself comfortably in the drawer. "Do you want a blanket?"

"No room," the Other said mournfully. "When I get back, I'm going to requisition myself the biggest house in Cardiff. Enjoy the next few years of not being claustrophobic."

"Too late," Jack said. Just watching himself lying there was doing bad things to his sense of space. "I think I may start standing for hours in random open places, just to compensate for you being in there."

"That's the spirit," he said, then keyed the closing mechanism. "Go forth and confuse the masses."

The Hub alarm sounded as someone approached the cog door.

"And one more thing," the other one said as the drawer closed. "Give Alex a kiss for us. He's going to die in sixteen hours."


End file.
